Amidst the Chaos, an Opportunity to Build

Welcome to the Future of Education. And now here's your host, Michael Horne.

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horne. And you're joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think this through, today, I think we have a repeat guest, if I'm not mistaken, Mackie Raymond. She's the program director for Hoover Institution's education work. She was the director of CREDO for many years at Stanford University, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, and with the Hoover Institute Institutions, Education Futures Council. Together they put out this terrific report, ours to solve once and for all, securing the outcomes our students need. That's probably more introduction, Mackie, than you need because you've done so much in the world of education. But first, good to see you. Thanks for joining me.

Oh, it's wonderful to be here, Michael. Thanks for inviting me.

Yeah. No. So you wrote this really provocative note to me that sort of. I had written this piece for my substack and Forbes about how disruption of schooling might finally be possible in the world of education savings accounts, because for the first time, families might feel like, you know, they're losing out if they aren't exercising their choice in sort of the savings accounts that come with it. So there's this sense of value that's been overlaid with certain states moving in this direction. And then you wrote me and said, well, not only that, but we've been arguing, right, for this new operating system, really, the foundational principles of how education operates in this country, and seen states as sort of the lever against that. But this I'll let you describe in a second. But these changes at the federal level maybe have actually accelerated the timeline over which the recommendations and the thought we had put into that report have become even more relevant quicker than we thought that they would. So maybe you should lay out the premise because I probably just did a poor job and sort of give us the context for what the report was arguing for in terms of a quote, unquote, new operating system and why the current moment, in the current context perhaps is conducive to that.

Well, first, you did a beautiful job setting this up, so thank you. The clarity of your introduction is really helpful for all of this. So we've known for a long time that the current way that K12 public education operates in the United States isn't getting the job done for lots and lots of students. And we would also argue the entire system itself continues to not produce graduates and product that is actually internationally competitive. So we've known that for a long time. We also know that a lot of what we've tried to do to improve education has not worked. And based on some earlier work at the Hoover Institution, we dug into what was behind that. And one of the important conclusions there was that we have created a system that is phenomenally capable of resisting change. It is intransigent in really, really important ways. And, and so this brought us to the question of what would it take to actually have a public education system, federal, state and local, that really was capable of adapting, was capable of innovating, was capable of disrupting where it was necessary in order to make sure that students were getting the kinds of academic and non academic preparation that would set them up for success. All, all the things that we want for our kids. How could we think about the system as itself as a lever for doing that? And so the Education Futures Council was brought together to sort of ponder that question. And the conclusion that the future council members came to was that the way in which decisions were made and executed in K12 from the federal and state and local levels were actually a big, big deterrent to effective operation and effective impact on student learning. And that led to then, okay, what would be a better approach to thinking about what we call the operating system? So we're not calling for a different curriculum, we're not calling for a different staffing model. We're not talking about a longer school year or a different school model. We're really talking about how do the institutions themselves work on their own and work together. And the Futures Council report, ours to solve once and for all, posits that there is a possibility of reorganizing what happens at the state and federal level and at the local level in order to create a much better environment for creating conditions for positive learning for students. So that's the purpose of the report. We in a million years would never have expected what we've seen in the last six months. Our initial thinking after the publication of the report, which happened last October, before the election, we thought we were talking about a three to five year timeline of very carefully building a coalition of both advocates and policy leaders to basically try to enable some of these kinds of changes that the report called for. And then the inauguration happened. And within a very short period of time, it became clear that the field of play at the federal level is open for the kinds of disruption that might be possible in order to advance this more productive conversation about the institutional arrangements. You could think of that as a new federalism that, that we're advocating for. And the conditions have softened at the federal level to the point where this could actually be a constructive conversation.

I want to dig into a bunch of those parts. Maybe first for the audience, let's lay out, like, as you all see it, what would be the pillars or commitments, I think is the way the report phrases it, of the new operating system? And what would the different actors, local, state, federal, what would be their responsibilities, if you will, in such a system? And maybe once we have that understanding, then I have so many questions for you. So let's start there.

We have a limited amount of time, Michael.

Yeah, yeah, it's true, it's true. So we'll do our best.

Yeah. All right. So every single enterprise, whether it's private business, whether it's a social service agency, whatever, they have to have a few operating essentials in order to function. And we call for those as operating essentials for the new operating system. They involve being very clear about what the outcomes are that you want to achieve. And so the report is calling for a broader definition of student success and new measures in order to reflect whether or not we're making progress on those. Second part of that is a regular system of measuring how students are doing. Certainly coming out of the pandemic, we collectively as a nation, care a whole lot more about what students know and can do than we did before. A bad way to get that gift, but I think we can leverage that and move that forward. And then after a measurement system, we have to be candid about the fact that there's a broad range of performance in the system in schools that we have to acknowledge. If we're committed to making sure that every single child gets the preparation for a life of opportunity, then we have to have accountability. It doesn't have to look exactly the way that it has for the last 25 years, but accountability definitely has to be part of the system. And finally, it sounds like a no brainer, but we really have to create and assure that there are safe learning environments that are conducive to both instruction and learning. And that's not a trivial thing. So the current debate about cell phones in classrooms, the whole problem of school security, whether it's digital or physical, plays into that. We have to make a commitment that schools are environments in whatever way they actually roll forward. They are environments that are safe and conducive to learning. So those are the operating pieces. The commitments are that we need to change the way in which we do business. And over very many years, like 40 now, 45 years, what's happened is that we have created a very strong top down directive process for setting education policy. And it doesn't make sense to us that that should be the case. We have huge variation across the country in terms of what local conditions look like and what learning environments look like across the country. And so having somebody who is from a very remote perspective choosing typically a one size fits all solution and then wondering why it doesn't work across all the settings that it's tried to be adopted to, and then blaming people on implementation infidelity doesn't make sense to us. So we're looking for a different approach to building capacity so that there can be a regular culture of adaptation and innovation towards student learning. So not local people reinventing the education process, but that they are capable of understanding what new tools are available and putting those to good use. And if that's the place that we want local folks to be comfortable and proficient, then the rest of the system has to modify to make that happen. And so that suggests a different role where we're actually saying the learning environment is the top of the pyramid, not the bottom. So we're not top down, we're supporting up. And that means that the role of local agencies and state agencies and the federal agencies have to understand what they are good at and what they can provide. That would be a constructive contribution to this new approach. And that speaks to being a whole lot clearer about what does work and what doesn't in particular environments. Capturing that information, making that information available to local actors in a way that's really constructive and useful and practical. It means that we want to know at a more continuous level how schools are doing and create incentives so that schools are facing conditions that align adult interests in getting better themselves with the improved outcomes that we want. And clearly this talks about a different attitude on the part of adults from the top to the bottom, that these are all now opportunities for really thinking differently about the professionalism of the work and how we cultivate and support that over the lifespan of individuals as educators and as other actors in the system.

So let me try to make it like present an example that feels very different from what we've had and help us fit this into the framework or not. I guess so at one level, let's say I'm in a particular region, advanced manufacturing is a big employment outcome that has different competencies and skills and knowledge base. Right. That are, that are important for students. And we could pick our flavor of Advanced manufacturing. But just stay with high level for a moment at the local level. I think what you're saying is like we would say these are the student outcomes that we want to see and we'd have a professional teaching force that reflects what it looks like to educate students to be able to do those things. And if I hear you right, the role of the state and even federal would be less like dictating did you hit a certain test that everyone has to hit? And more helping us have tools to measure, perhaps have tools to understand which jobs are in demand, maybe and what and like research basis of Therefore, these are the skills taxonomy. Someone might want to learn, you know, in in demand fields or we see a shift in supply demand, therefore your outcomes might want to change. And so it's more of an informative into that. Tell me like start to edit that. Where is that right and wrong?

So I think you're on the right track there, Michael. We think that there are really strong outcomes that we need to be unapologetic about, but I think we need to be a lot looser on means, on the pathways to get there. And let's face it, even in today's landscape, there are schools, there are districts that are already doing well. There's no reason for us to start trying to shape their behavior. They know what they're doing and we should not have a heavy hand on that. We should say you're able to demonstrate that you're having strong learning outcomes. We should back off where the emphasis and the attention is necessary. And I think better placed is on helping those communities where the learning outcomes are not as strong as we would want them to be and that they want them to be and help them understand what the right combination of success elements could be for them. Again, we're not expecting people to go and innovate on their own. We're not expecting people to, you know, on Sunday night build new curricula for their classes for the week. We think that there is enough good stuff out there from successful districts, from successful teachers, from the research that shows us what works. We just don't harness that in a way that makes it easy for folks on the ground in local communities, in local districts, coaching local school teams. We don't make it easy for them to say we need to do something different. Here are five things that we know work in communities like yours. Maybe you want to take a look at those. It's sort of like a most favored nation kind of approach here at the local level. But the state and federal opportunity Here is to build the capacity to bring those exemplars of success and set the cultural expectation that if you're not meeting the same ratchets in communities like yours are able to hit, then you've got work to do and let's get on it.

So it's almost like the, it's not a good joke, but the thing that I often say, right is like it's, you don't have doctors building vaccines in medicine, right? Like that's crazy. You have, you have a separate set of companies that are doing that than supplying the doctors, et cetera. And essentially what I think I hear you saying is like, yeah, look, there's textbook companies and assessment companies, but actually there's a lot more that goes into teaching and learning that federal and state can be using its resources, whether that's consultative, advisory, connecting or maybe even building alongside like to help support efforts on the ground. And that might be your school district, it might be your micro school, it might be your charter school. Forget about the form. Its point is on the ground getting support from other players that are able to see across geography or patterns or things of that nature. Is that getting even closer then?

Yeah, Michael, I think you're really zeroing in on this. I mean, we know that there are tremendous forces of change happening across the country and we're not putting the right emphasis on preparing local districts for the kinds of change, local schools for the kinds of change that they're going to face. And so in addition to moving away from a top down regulatory mandate approach, we also have, I think, much more value in the system that we can harvest that states, for example, could be operating, the development of some of these knowledge bases. I mean, one of the things that I've talked about for years is something that I call the institutional commons, where states have the data to identify what the best 4th grade math teacher is in the state. Why don't they set up some kind of an incentive system so that that teacher is open to sharing their full set of resources and that that's packaged in a really easy way for some other 4th grade math teacher to go get. Why don't we, why don't we harvest. Here are great ways to set up community based learning opportunities. And here are 12 different models that have been successful around the country so other people can learn on what are the right processes. But also here are some models that we could just flat out adopt, right?

And just take rather than reinvent the wheel. Or we might say, gee, it needs modification because our population doesn't have these sets of resources or these future aspirations are different here for whatever reason or something like that.

That's right. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of new learning horizons that as a system we need. We know that there's a huge R and D function at the federal level for building new measures and metrics for assessing this broader set of outcomes that we want. It doesn't make sense to have 50 states doing that work themselves in parallel. It's huge fixed cost to do that. So that's an obvious place where the scale and the scope of a federal initiative would make sense. But there are places at the state level that do make sense. Like being able to say this works well here is something that states ought to be really interested in getting behind. And I think with a little bit of encouragement and support in the way in which we establish the new federalism, that's going to be a very fruitful path forward for state agencies.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I imagine it could link in with workforce development agencies at the state level that's seeing data trends of hiring is actually increasing here. Therefore or right in a local district's not going to necessarily have the time or capacity to absorb that themselves.

Yeah. I'd put one other thing on the table there and that is that we have across the country a number of really wonderful examples of almost every single piece of this new system that we're talking about. We don't need starting from scratch to create the conditions. We have positive examples of a relaxed regulatory environment. The charter school world shows us what that looks like. We have great opportunity to redefine what the outcomes are we want from kids from the portrait of the graduates and these new workforce development models that span high school and post secondary. So it's not like we have to go all the way back to zero. What we have to do is we have to be smart and coherent and intentional about setting the system in a direction that allows for these kinds of changes to occur in the system so it better serves students and families and communities.

A couple things that spurs for me and I'll try to take them in sequence, but I guess the first one is, and you can correct me if this is wrong because you are way more expert in measurement and tracking student learning than I will ever be. But the sort of the narrative I think of ed reform over the last, let's call it eight years maybe has been like, okay, student achievement grew during no Child Left behind era. There was a lot of friction in that accountability model. But we saw growth 20, 11, 12, somewhere around there. It starts to taper and actually fall off even before the pandemic as the consensus around accountability weakens. But what I think the story doesn't tell is that actually a lot of that growth was also driven in, in the late 80s and then through the 90s before the federal government sort of solidified some of this stuff through state action. And so I would love you to just reflect on like sort of people who say, whoa, wait a second, if we decentralize too much, isn't that going to be. That sort of led to some of the Common Core conversations, as I recall. And I think I hear you saying that might not be the only way to look at it. And so I'd love you to just to sort of help us navigate that conversation around what's centralized versus decentralized.

We have relied on states for the most part to define what the outcomes are that we want and the learning standards. And I think that that is an appropriate exercise at the state level. If you look at the learning standards across the states, and it's an ugly project to undertake, so I wouldn't recommend anybody Hussein to do that. The learning standards are pretty consistent. What you might argue is that we have piled on more and more learning standards that are making the whole thing chaotic. I would point to Indiana, where they went through a very unsexy process of being very, very intentional about reviewing what are the critical standards that we absolutely have to have. And what came out the other end was a series of very, very deliberate learning standards that were scaffolded beautifully from early to late public education that lent themselves to a much broader set of engagement with other learning experiences and tying into some of the workforce development stuff that's very top of mind in Indiana right now. We know that can happen, and we think that that's a right place for it to happen is at the state level. Having said that, I think there's always a role at the federal level to advocate for and to protect student groups that we know from state level data are not getting a fair shake. I think there is a complete justification for protecting vulnerable populations with federal standards and an expectation then that we would measure and pay attention to that and potentially intervene with additional pressure if that has to happen from the feds, if in fact some student groups are not getting the same kind of shake. I mean, that was the origin of the civil rights activities to begin with. We have vulnerable populations of special ed. I would also say we're in an era now where Students are differentially vulnerable in terms of their status as legitimate students that come from a variety of origins. But I can see that this would be an area of ongoing concern. So yes, I do think that there is a sort of a bottom line protection of individual students and their right to an education that has to be federal. It's part of our sort of constitutional commitment and our democratic fabric that we believe everybody has opportunity and should be prepared equivalently. So I like all of that. I do think that there are lots and lots of cross state opportunities that exist. There are models for schools that are coming up both through the traditional district realm and through the charter school realm and charter management organizations that set the tone for potentially national models of schools and potentially national networks of schools that we don't think about today, but we ought to be open to because they can set such a high bar for student results that they ought to have some kind of a recognition that says these are exceptional schools. Exceptional schools ought to have additional privileges within states. Their exceptional schools ought to have additional privileges and additional autonomies. But also these emerging national networks and constellations of schools, if they're stellar, then we should be able to allow local schools to affiliate with these networks and not stand in the way of that. And that doesn't mean you'd give up local control. It's just that they have a membership option that says quality could come from outside the local area, it could come from a national federation of schools. And we should encourage that if it's really high quality.

And so in terms of the federal role right now, it seems like I hear you saying, on the one hand, I'm just thinking about some of the tensions here. Like it seems like on the one hand they've said we want states to lead. So that's an opportunity. And maybe frankly, it's an opportunity for experimentation because we don't know exactly how this new operating system should look. But two, I also see like a bit of a potential retreat. I know it could be a reset, but it also could be a retreat on some of the research functions that the federal government's traditionally done. And so I'm curious, like how you're thinking about what's opportunity, what's vacuum, what's threat, what's, you know, how do we drive this forward in line with this vision right now?

Well, so sort of a rule of thumb that I have been using in my own thinking and in the conversations that I've been having is that decisions should be handed down to the lowest possible level where you have high quality and scope at the same time. And so with, with all the good intentions of lots of the federal programs that grew up over the years, there were a lot of things that were happening that didn't have to have a federal footprint on them that actually could have been handled effectively at the state level. And so that part of the reset, I think has some positive upside to it. The things that I think have to stay at the federal level are clearly the national assessments of what students know. Because that's the truth, that's the light of truth across all these state systems. And we can't give that up. The second thing is I do think that there are a new set of federal priorities for research and development and I want to stay away from the R and D umbrella because that constitutes a different set of things. There's a role for federal involvement in R and D, but here I'm really specifically thinking of undertaking specific programs of research on new measures, on new assessments, on emerging practices in light of AI and all of these tectonic changes. There are things that the federal agency has line of sight on that also scale best at the federal level. And so I do have a sort of a wish list under my blotter on my desk about what that might look like. But I also think then that continuing the attention on vulnerable populations and using this moment to instead of be mandate focused and regulatory focus, use this moment to cultivate a kind of capacity building at the state level is a phenomenal moment that I really hope we don't miss. And I really am anxious to see that that becomes part of the ongoing commitment to public education that we have as a nation and that it has a strong presence at a national federal level.

As we start to wrap up here, let's stay on that vulnerable student population piece because one of the things, as you know, I'm super intrigued by these Education Savings Account states, it shifts accountability in my mind to the parents, frankly, themselves, but a real concern, and I grant it is like in a world where we are thinking more deeply about high quality instructional materials, coherent sets of background knowledge right across discipline to turn people into really good readers and things of that nature. If someone's experience specifically from a low income background becomes more fragmented, maybe they lose some of that connective tissue. How would the, would the federal role be to really be using its scale to sort of spotlight that, find trends that you might not be aware of and help local actors? I mean, even down to an individual student? Or is that overreach? Or is it more like identifying Trends and building capacity, like how, how does that all shake out? So we maybe use the benefits of choice, but don't lose some of the negatives that can come from incoherence.

Frankly, this is a moment that actually happened in the charter school world as networks of charter organizations formed into charter management organizations and communities had larger shares of their students enrolled in both charter schools and charter management organization schools, we faced some of that, that there was an incentive on the part of new entrants to really zero in on what their sweet spot was and be careful about what the. Protecting the brand became important. I'm not saying that charter schools shed students because I don't think that happened. Our data never showed that that was the case. But there was always the incentive that there were students that were going to be very difficult to serve and that the expectation and the incentives were set up to keep those in the public sector, in the public district, public schools. I worry that as we proliferate the number of choice paths that we have that we're seeing, we have the potential for seeing something similar and that if we have different standards of performance across all of these models, that we are in fact inadvertently going to be creating tiering of outcomes. And it's not clear to me that putting parents as the final arbiters of quality is going to be as successful and productive as many of the choice advocates think, unless we can tie that to very clear understanding of what the outcomes are that students have to have in order to be successful and real transparency about how these individual models are delivering on that. So I see accountability evolving to stratified accountability. That's very clear about what the channel is that students are pursuing for their education.

And so just staying with that for a moment, I'm just trying to think how practically that looks. In some sense, it's like an asset based view of the world of maybe a local community concludes this branch of mathematics is not important. We don't think for our future, fine. But it's going to be reflected in that you're not showing mastery of that. And then someone might flag that and say, hey, just want to make sure you're aware you're not preparing your students for fields that, you know, take advantage of this branch of mathematics. And maybe that's an intentional choice, but we want to make sure it's transparent.

Certainly transparent, but where there are lots of choice vehicles, you could imagine that a district would say, you know, collectively we don't really need physics, let's just say. But it turns out that somebody really wants Physics for themselves or for their child, then the ESA piece can kick in there and say, no, no, no, you know what, I'm going to customize this with an ESA because I really want physics for my child. The problem is a lot of parents don't know what they really want for their child in that level of specificity. And I think that's a state function to make sure that parents are actively informed and can easily exercise their wishes for their kids and transact in a larger choice environment in a way that's productive for their kids.

So in some ways that's what like Amy Guidera was doing in Virginia, I think around reading of making it super clear to parents, hey, just want to be clear, this is where your kid is at from a reading level perspective. This is the curriculum. We think that. I can't remember how far she went, but I think it went fairly detailed into this may be why the gaps are there so that parents built a level of information that they wouldn't have otherwise had and they didn't have to go seek it. I think that's the other important part of it, if I remember.

Yeah, you're right about that. A related example, Michael, is that underperforming schools and districts in Louisiana were given a menu of high quality instructional curricula and material that they could, that they could choose from. Right. They still had the power of choice, but they couldn't stay in a position of inferior production. And so I see that as part of the sort of new accountability work that I think is a natural part of the new federalism. Helping states develop that kind of capacity, that kind of information, and making sure that that connection to students and their future is a solid one for everyone involved.

Really helpful. Okay, final thoughts. Things that we ought to keep an eye on as this ball continues to move. I'd love your thinking along that.

Well, I'm going to end with throwing you a rose. It's probably a very old rose at this point because it goes all the way back to disrupting, disrupting class. That the models of disruption that you called for before were so in the context of the system that existed at that time and the environment were so radical. But guess what? The world has grown into your scenario. And so I just want to say I think this is an era of phenomenal change. And the question is whether we let the change happen at us and to us or whether we grab onto it and make that change work for us. Want to thank you for all the years of talking about the fact that this is a natural process and that we should get there. And now that we're here, really hope that we can work together across both political spectrum and across geographic boundaries to really create the system that best serves our kids with that kind of approach.

Well, the best thinking being done in that system is from the work that you've done. So huge thank you for coming here and talking about it, but for putting out the report. For those that don't know, if you just Google Hoover Institution and ours to solve once and for all, you will get that PDF report. But there's also a really cool on the educationfuturecouncil.com site where you can get the report as well. There's also a video around it, an AI generated podcast. There's a lot of resources that we have just scratched the surface of. So check all of those out for sure. What else should they follow?

Well, I think the best thing they can do is just follow along, paying attention to what the public debate is and be ready to jump in because their voice is going to be extremely important.

Perfect. We'll leave it there. Mackie, huge thank you. And for all of you joining us, we'll see you next time on the Future of Education.